Like its name, Beast is straightforward and simple. This Portland-based restaurant offers up prix-fixe six-course menus of uncomplicated yet refined dishes. Each week the cuisine changes according to apparent inspiration from the fields, forests, and moods of the owner and her culinary team. Foie gras bons bons may share the menu with pork, pork liver, and sour cherry pate.

Beast is a new collaboration between the Montreal-based French producer, Jean-Phi Goncalves, frontman of the electro band Plaster, and singer Betty Bonifassi. Their sound inhabits a place where the cinematic grandeur of Portishead meets the immediacy of Rage Against the Machine. Bonifassi calls it ‘trip rock’, invoking the way haunting choirs and glitchy electronic bits […]